Unlocking Our Domestic Lng Potential Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. This bill would allow unlimited amounts of our liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to be sent abroad to any designation in the world including to our adversaries like China.

This is all about China. The President gets up on a regular basis and says we need to export more LNG to China. My Republican colleagues say they worry about Beijing and what Beijing is doing to challenge us. Yet, they are going to allow with this bill unlimited exports to Communist China.

By sending more American LNG abroad, this bill would reduce our energy resources at home, raising our constituents' utility bills at a time when they can least afford it. It just makes common sense that if we send liquefied natural gas abroad, it is going to raise the price here because there will be less here. It is just Economics 101, in my opinion.

Americans are already being crushed by the rising cost of living. Now Republicans are making matters worse by pushing legislation that will only drive up monthly power bills even further. It is quite the departure from President Trump's campaign promise to cut American power bills in half. He said that during the course of the campaign that in the first year he would cut power bills in half. Instead, they keep climbing.

Right now, thanks to the congressional Republicans' backward energy policies, electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation. More than 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills, with many having to make the impossible choice of either paying for medicine and food or keeping their lights on. I think it is a disgrace that, instead of offering up solutions to this affordability crisis, Republicans are here today to just make it worse.

Let's be clear, Mr. Speaker. It is a well-established fact that unlimited LNG exports would increase prices here at home. If my colleagues don't believe me, last year the Secretary of Energy noted: ``Unfettered exports of LNG would increase wholesale domestic natural gas prices by over 30 percent.''

Mr. Speaker, if you are a Republican who perhaps didn't trust the Democratic Department of Energy, I would certainly assume you could trust your own current Department of Energy.

Just last week, the Energy Information Administration noted that it expects natural gas prices to increase by 16 percent next year due largely to increased exports of LNG. Mr. Speaker, 16 percent is on top of the 15 percent increase in natural gas costs that Americans already suffered this year. It is all due to the LNG export approvals that President Trump made in his first term.

All this bill does is make that problem worse by ensuring there are zero restrictions on how much of our own LNG we are shipping out to other countries. The only ones who stand to benefit are fossil fuel companies, proving that Republicans care more about padding the profits of their rich fossil fuel friends than they do about lowering costs for the average American.

Mr. Speaker, I want to stress the China part again. China is one of the top recipients of American LNG, and not only the President but LNG companies are openly bragging about how they can sell to Chinese buyers. This bill completely removes any review of whether exporting more of our LNG to China is in the public interest.

The chairman said that that is a presumption that the public interest has met. I argue it is more than a presumption. There is no longer any review of the public interest. When I talk about the public interest, I am talking about price. I am talking about national security. I am talking about impact on the environment, the air, and whatever people breathe.

This bill completely removes any review of what is in the public interest before we export to China or anyone else. To me, it is the very reversal. The President talks about America First. This is putting America last in my opinion.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know what to say. We have seen this story before. Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago, Congress removed the ban on exporting American crude oil. I already mentioned that. Before that, we were only sending China 420,000 barrels of oil each year. We now send China more than 160 million barrels of oil a year.

Clearly, Republicans have learned nothing from that, despite constantly proclaiming the importance of beating China in the AI race and so many other things. Republicans consistently say that losing the AI race to China would be like losing the Cold War to Russia. The bill they are proposing today is like selling rocket fuel to the Soviets during the space race. It defies all logic.

Finally, I want to point out a basic fact. We have already approved enough permits to triple our LNG exports by the end of the decade, and that is on top of the more than quadrupling of LNG exports we have already seen over the last 6 years. When my colleagues on the other side talk about Europe and our allies, there is no way that at this point with the permits that have already been approved that the Europeans or any of our allies have to worry about not getting enough LNG from us.

Mr. Speaker, I think it makes sense to ask the Department of Energy to keep an eye on this to ensure that all these exports are actually a good thing and are in our public interest: For our economy, for our national security, and for the communities that we here represent.

All this bill does is get rid of all of that and say we don't care and we should export whatever we want to China or whoever else. The American people are tired of these antics. They don't have time for them. They need us to get serious about addressing the skyrocketing cost of living. Today they will see that Republicans are making it worse, while Democrats are fighting to make it better to try to reduce prices.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. PALLONE. Castor), who is the ranking member of the Energy Subcommittee.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

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Mr. PALLONE. Elfreth).

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I will mention to my colleagues on the other side that the Biden administration did not ban LNG exports.

There was a pause because they were concerned about the public interest, in particular, because the price was increasing for power, for natural gas, and so many other things.

It made sense to take a review and see what that meant for price, what that meant for national security, what that meant for the environment and climate.

The reality is that the amount of natural gas permits and LNG permits continue to rise and rise every day. This idea that somehow they banned it is simply not the case.

Mr. Speaker, I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, talk about the demand for LNG in Europe and how we are not giving Europe or other allies enough LNG. The fact of the matter is that we are sending more LNG to our European allies and our other allies than ever before.

DOE, the Department of Energy, has issued enough permits to triple our export capacity from what it is today, even if they never issued another permit. That will take us into the early 2030s, when European policy is set to reduce natural gas consumption. We have approved so many terminals that most forecasters are seeing a massive glut of LNG on the market starting next year and running well into the 2030s.

If this bill never becomes law, our European allies, our allies--I think South Korea or Japan was mentioned--will be well supplied.

What is really happening here with this bill is helping China. That is what this is about, Beijing, Communist China.

In 2024 alone, the United States exported over 200 billion cubic feet of gas to China. At a time when Americans are struggling to pay their heating bills and our power grids are facing unprecedented demand, President Trump and his Republican Party care more about subsidizing China's economic development and basically lining the pockets of their fossil fuel friends.

Republicans claim to be obsessed with beating China in the AI race. Why are they trying to advance a bill that makes it easier to send American LNG to China to fuel their data centers and AI tools? Why are they putting the profits of Chinese technology companies over the well- being of American families and the success of our American companies?

I have said this before, but it bears repeating. Republicans on the Committee on Energy and Commerce have compared winning the AI race with China to the importance of winning the Cold War. If that is true, then why are we sending more energy and trying to send even more and more energy to China? It makes absolutely no sense.

H.R. 1949 will enrich Big Oil and the Chinese technology companies that rely on LNG to fuel their data centers, all while worsening the energy affordability crisis that Americans are experiencing. The only Americans who benefit from this deal are the rich fossil fuel executives.

H.R. 1949 squarely puts China first and America last. The President and the Republicans keep talking about putting America first. How does this bill do that? This bill does the opposite.

Mr. Speaker, I respect the chairman of our committee so much. The last time he spoke, he said that we need the world energy price to come down. What about the price here in the United States? The price is higher in the rest of the world than it is here, and that is why the rest of the world wants more of our LNG, because it is cheaper for them.

What about us, though? Shouldn't we be primarily concerned about Americans and the price here?

This bill, in my opinion, is just a giant handout to Big Oil and Gas that enriches our adversaries, primarily China, and forces middle-class families to pay the price with higher home energy bills. The bill removes the requirement that the Department of Energy determine LNG exports to be in the public interest before approving any export applications.

The bill assumes that all exports of LNG are automatically in the public interest. I think this is absurd, considering multiple analyses have found that increased LNG exports directly lead to higher natural gas prices here in America.

Last year, the Department of Energy's own review was clear: Unfettered gas exports will hurt the American economy. It found that energy costs would go up by more than $100 per year for every individual. At the same time, that is on top of the costs imposed by Republicans' big beautiful or ugly bill.

The Department of Energy also found that natural gas prices would increase by over 30 percent, so we are essentially, in this bill, removing crucial safeguards. What you are going to have instead is a Wild West, allowing all adversaries like China to purchase even more of our energy, essentially, to use against us.

This is the same playbook that Republicans ran when they repealed the crude oil export ban in 2015. After that repeal went through, oil exports to China increased from 420,000 barrels per year to over 160 million barrels per year in 2023. Last year, the United States sent 213 billion cubic feet of LNG to China, but Trump says he wants to send even more. He says that all the time.

All I am saying is if beating China is really as important as Republicans and President Trump claim, we shouldn't be raising our own energy prices just to fuel Chinese data centers. That is what this bill does.

I ask my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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